Demola Global has signed the first agreements based on the Demola partnership model in Finland.

The new model comes at a time when companies have a growing need for a long-term strategic development tool. Construction company YIT, who wants to think with students about the future of living, is one of Demola’s new partnership clients.

“We were immediately interested in the Demola concept, in which the company’s experts work with university students. It will be great to hear young people’s thoughts about future living, as they are the ones directly affected by the topic. The new partnership model means we can quickly test several future living concepts,” says Marko Oinas, Vice President, Strategy and Development at YIT.

At Demola, a team of company representatives and university students solves a challenge presented by the company over the course of eight weeks. The new Demola partnership means that the company can start several consecutive Demola challenges instead of just one.

YIT currently has three Demola challenges underway in Helsinki and Tampere that try to answer questions related to home-buying and future residential services. Three new challenges will start at the end of 2019.

“The advantage of the Demola partnership is that the themes that come up can be deepened as the challenge progresses. During the autumn we’re going to gain a lot of useful information on how young people see living and how they want it to develop in the future. We are expecting results that can change how we operate and challenge our current concepts,” Oinas says.

Demola offers solutions for waste management of the future 

The waste management company Pirkanmaan Jätehuolto, owned by 17 municipalities, has worked with Demola in the past, and, based on its positive experiences, wanted to continue cooperation on a longer-term contract.

“At present, climate change is an example of an issue that affects us all. Our society is also moving further and further towards the circular economy. Demola breaks these large challenges into smaller problems, and we get innovative solutions, for example, related to how we should organize waste collection in the future,” says Harri Kallio, CEO of Pirkanmaan Jätehuolto.

Kallio says the advantage of Demola is that the teams consist of people from outside the company’s own sector.

“We want to genuinely listen to students’ ideas and take these ideas seriously when developing our business,” Kallio says.

Virpi Oksala, Account Executive at Pirkanmaan Jätehuolto, says Demola is a suitably rigorous concept.

“We can gather ideas quickly and systematically and take advantage of the results in the best possible way. We’re very much looking forward to hearing new and even unusual ideas,” says Oksala.

 "M-Files wants to change how the world manages information" 

Software company M-Files is a leading global supplier of intelligent information management. M-Files particularly invests in new, AI-based solutions to make data management more efficient and automatic. The chance to work with a new generation easily and simply interested M-Files in Demola from the start.

“In our busy everyday lives, future-focused work can be challenging, as there is usually only time for short-term issues. We are really impressed by Demola’s coordination, which began with recruiting the students and facilitating the process. That allows our experts to focus on what matters most – working with the students,” says Jorma Törnblom, Director, Head of Project Management Office.

Törnblom says that Demola offers M-Files the opportunity to work globally with current students, who are the end users and business decision-makers of tomorrow – and perhaps future M-Files employees.

“M-Files wants to be bold, international and constantly develop. We want to generate ideas from a range of viewpoints and find out things like how users of the future will want to manage data or what work environments will look like in the future. The unlimited number of Demola challenges will provide a great opportunity to refine the ideas that come up over the next year,” Törnblom says.

Other Demola clients in autumn 2019 include Elisa, Raute, Novatron and the city of Tampere, and, in Shanghai, the Finnish industrial companies Kone, Metso and Raute.